


when there is nothing left but us (and of course it had to be you)

by ljbrary



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Ahsoka Tano, BAMF Darth Maul, Gen, Mentioned CT-7567 | Rex, Order 66 (Star Wars), POV Ahsoka Tano
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:09:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28730970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljbrary/pseuds/ljbrary
Summary: “What do you want?”An audacious scoff, a sickening laugh that felt like shattered glass grating against her montrals, and then —“Oh, please, Lady Tano. Enough with the theatrics — you have nothing to offer me except misaligned priorities. Even now, in the face of such strenuous upheaval of the very certainties you never knew were, in fact, the antithesis of your upbringing, you still level your blade at me as though we are still adversaries on a predetermined battlefield.”...“I am nothing like you.”“Lady Tano, we are but two sides of the same coin.”:::[or au where Ahsoka makes an unplanned escape from Order 66, and Maul decides to tag along (uninvited, of course)]
Relationships: CT-7567 | Rex & Ahsoka Tano, Darth Maul & Ahsoka Tano
Kudos: 26





	when there is nothing left but us (and of course it had to be you)

A guttural, visceral would-be scream -- the taste of bile and the sound of choked, refrained silence when the scream didn’t even come -- that shredded all equilibrium of dignity she had held onto like the shreds of a thin-bare shirt snapped too soon, but not soon enough.

His name was unintelligible — more throat than articulative wording when it fell from her lips — but the pain in her chest that speared through her was no less real. Blindingly so, until she couldn’t see anything accept the absence of where he was _supposed to be_. 

“ _Go!”_ Was all he had said. 

And then he was gone, and she was still there, gasping for air that wasn’t there on the cold, hard durasteel of a landing ramp that she _didn’t even want to be on_ — not alone, anyway.

Cold, like the barren ebb and flow of the turbulent air whipping about the starship; hard, like the faceless plastoid that held all too familiar faces underneath — ones that mere _hours_ ago were willing to _lay_ _down_ their lives _for_ her, but now were relentlessly _wasting_ their own lives _because_ of her. 

“ _Rex!_ ”

And then she could stay no longer — she had nothing left to stay for — (not that she had anything to _go_ for, either, except maybe the lasting sacrifice of a friend not going to waste), because he had _kriffing let go_ and just _l_ _ _eft_ her all alone _ with her hand still clenched around open air and a cooling sense of absence that felt more like a block of ice than empty particles of oxygen, hand still tingling from the sickening scrape that was the last touch she would ever receive from him as his gauntlet had slid aching against hers until it was just _gone_.

Until _he_ was just gone.

And she felt so _cold_. 

Cold enough that even the scalding hot burn of a blaster bolt felt lukewarm, muted in comparison to the cruelly personal blizzard around her, chilling everything now that she could feel the crippling _absence_ of where Rex was _supposed to be_. 

But _wasn't_.

Not a sound fell from her still twisted lips, silent in the absence of her scream that _still wouldn’t come_ , even when the impact of a plasma bolt landed a glancing blow over her lowered blade. 

Because failure hadn’t been an option, but here they were — here _she_ was. Because Rex was gone, and in no way was that a success… more like a pyrrhic victory -- a twisted sort of taunting that laughed in her face, mocking her despair, ardently declaring _you’re the one that lived_.

And that was a failure in her book. 

A _heinous_ failure.

And then she had to reel in her reeling head, because she was a _commander_ for _kriffs sake_ — or had been — and she had to _go_. 

And it wasn’t until she was gasping for breath, fighting her way to the cockpit and prematurely setting the hyperspace coordinates did she think she should have closed the ramp — because it wasn’t until she had cleared the landing deck and slammed down the activation for the hyperdrive to be greeted with the streaking blues and whites of hyperspace did she take a moment to remember to breathe — and then forget how to again all too soon. 

“I must commend you, _Lady Tano_ , for that was truly a laudable desertion.”

A subliminal instinct, or maybe she had thought it through — either way, her gut and brain alike agreed with her — because not a second after his utterance there was a sharp buzz whizzing through the air and a fiercely glowing blade at his neck. 

_Maul._

She had forgotten about _Maul._

“ _What are you doing?_ ” A hissed out abhorrence, equivocating a threat that need not be spoken — it was spoken for in the whites of her knuckles gripping the glowing blade at his throat. 

He leveled her with a look that seemed all too calm for someone with a blade mere centimeters from his trachea. His hauteur presence filled the small cabin and felt all too suffocating, even though Ahsoka was the one with the weapon. 

The insufferable lilt of his chin, vainglorious twitch of his lips, pretentious stare of his eyes burning relentlessly into her own with an air of something accusatory, as if calling _her_ the one with gall. 

She swept her blade ever closer, irritation and panic sizzling barely controlled under the surface, so close to bursting that she _knew_ he could feel it too. 

“I’m not _asking_ ,” it was a hiss, throaty and chaste and all together uncomposed — but she couldn’t have cared less. “I’m _demanding_.”

The lightsaber moved ever closer until his vicious eyes narrowed and a low hiss slipped through his own clenched jaw at the proximity of the searing heat to his red and black skin. 

“ _What do you want?_ ”

An audacious scoff, a sickening laugh that felt like shattered glass grating against her montrals, and then —

“Oh, _please_ , Lady Tano. Enough with the theatrics — you have nothing to offer me except misaligned priorities. Even now, in the face of such strenuous upheaval of the very certainties you never knew were, in fact, the antithesis of your upbringing, you still level your blade at me as though we are still adversaries on a predetermined battlefield.”

Ahsoka didn’t lower her blade, didn't even _breathe_ , as her still scrambling mind shifted through his response. 

Maul seemed to take her silence as an invitation to keep talking contumely, though Ahsoka had certainly _not_ seen it that way. 

“Oh, _Lady Tano_. Hard as it is for your _self-righteous_ person to comprehend, we are _alike_. Both _used_ , both _pawns_ and _tools_ and _expenditures_ for a higher power. Both built into the _schemes_ of which the likes you cannot even _fathom_ . We are synonymous in concept; _we need not be adversaries_ .” 

There was a lilt of hysteria in the cadence in which he spoke, intensely edging closer and closer to an edge Ahsoka couldn’t see but knew altogether it was _there_ and it was _close_ and there would not be so much as a threadbare _warning_ before not even a lightsaber would stand in the way of his focused delirium — but she still didn’t back down; _couldn’t_. 

“We are _nothing_ alike,” she spit back, still unmoving, unconceding, _unyielding_ , even as she could starkly feel the way Maul was toeing the line of rationality. 

A choked laugh, as if her blatantly unwavering denial was in and of itself the epitome of sardonic humor. “ _Not alike?_ ” he mocked her, voice dripping in derision and flirting with the edge of hysterium. “Lady Tano, we are but different sides of the _same_ _coin!”_

Ahsoka hissed out a breath of annoyance between her teeth. Talking to Maul was no different than talking in a circle, making a point to a durasteel wall.

_On and on with the dramatics._

“Don’t be such a _farce_ ,” was all she could spit out. “This isn’t some _satire_ performance in which you utter _vacuities_ just to save your own contemptible skin.”

Maul’s glowing yellow eyes bored down into her face, his momentary borderline-hysteria evaporating, the former derisiveness dissolving into a steely glare than brought chills down her spine in the worst way possible, as if the volatile receding of his audible mania was more telling a sign than the dangerous, deride laughter from moments ago. 

He leaned closer to her, but was abruptly deterred by a growl from the back of her throat, and a shivering warning of promised pain from the still aloft lightsaber. 

“Then let me ask you this, _Lady Tano_ , as obviously you must be too _daft_ to comprehend this basic understanding.” he hissed the insult through his barred teeth, her address like acid on his tongue. “What, _exactly_ , predetermines our animosity for each other? _What is it that makes us enemies anymore?_

“Surely not the _Republic_ ,” he continued derisively, the edge of mania slipping back into his voice, “for that ceases in its very _existence_ as we speak.”

Ahsoka's breath caught in her throat. 

_Too late for what? The Republic to fall? It has and you just cant see it!_

His words from the throne room on Mandalore echoing around her head felt like a lifetime ago -- but still, Maul wasn't finished. 

“Not the old _institutions_ so sacred to the Force, for we have _both_ long forsaken our roles in regard to _those_ ... so, tell me, Lady Tano — _enlighten me_ — as to why we are such _fervent_ adversaries when there is not a _thing_ left with the potency to dictate our continual opposition of each other?”

_There is not a thing left..._

And as she choked again on the air that was not there, Maul's malevolent presence looming over her, her knuckles white with her unrelenting grip on her saber, she could not let him be _right_. 

“Maybe this is a new _thing_ for you, then,” she forced through gritted teeth, leaning ever closer to the tall Zabrak who all but glowered down at her, still unmoving, as she let his searing eyes meet her own, all but matching in intensity. “But I have a thing called _morals_ . And only a _fool_ would call your inner drive _morally competent._ ”

And then it was _too fast_ , too _much_ to comprehend, because the next thing she knew there was an icy hand around her wrist and a sharp pain as it was _twisted_ — grip melting, and metal clunking to the ground, and the _snap-hiss_ of a deactivating lightsaber following. 

And then she was pressed up against the control board of the ship, back bent slightly back, wrist still in a vice-like grip no matter how hard she twisted, and hot, acrid breath stinging her face as Maul leaned ever closer, forcing her back to bend yet further against the surface as he leaned much too far into her space to be respectable. 

“ _Morals_ , Lady Tano?” His hissing, acidic tone was more _felt_ in her montrals than _heard_ . “You think that it is _morals_ that separate us now?”

She didn’t answer him, only glared back into his glowing yellow eyes, alight with a kind of mania that should have scared her more than it really did, as she twisted and pulled at the wrist she could feel was bruising in his icy, steel grasp. 

“ _Tell me_ , Lady Tano,” he all but whispered — though even still, it grated against her montrals with even more ardent pressure than his hysteric shouts moments before. “Who _decides_ who is morally _competent_ , or morally _not_ ? Is it you? Me? _The Jedi?_ ”

She gave one last wretch of her arm, and when that still ceased to bring results, she growled, low and guttural in the back of her throat. A sharp, visceral noise leaving a threat unspoken — though what she could really do all but pressed up against the panels of the ship, she didn’t know quite yet — but she would get creative. 

“ _Tell me_ , _Lady Tano._ I await your answer with the _utmost_ fervor.”

A beat of heated silence, only the tensing of muscles and humming of the hull to fill the pungent air. And then another, just as full of nothing but an absence of an answer that weighed heavier in the air than any scream would have, had she been able to utter one.

And then, mouth dry, throat even more arid, and muscles tense and aching, she clenched her jaw. “Well, for _starters_ ,” she ground out through clenched teeth, refusing to lower her gaze from his intense, searing glare. “I don’t just _kill_ people when they don't _agree_ with me.”

Maul hissed out a harsh laugh that was more of a concept than an actual show of humor. “Says the _soldier!_ Don't be _asinine_ ,” he all but snarled, almost nose to nose with her now, her spine curved uncomfortably against the durasteel panel, body crushed underneath Maul’s bodyweight. “You are no better than _I_ , Lady Tano. You are a _soldier_ , and a _soldier_ doesn't have to be restrained by _morals_ , no matter _which_ side they claim is the ethical one.” Her wrist still in an arrested handlement against her side, her other hand braced behind her to prevent her spine from fully folding over the panel. “ _I know you have killed before_ , my Lady. It is an _unanimous_ _fact_ of your upbringing.”

At Ahsoka’s scoff, Maul’s grip on her wrist tightened until she could feel her gauntlet bending and a pressure building up between her bones, and suddenly it took a significant amount of willpower not to wince.

“Oh, don't _flatter_ yourself, Lady Tano. You cannot tell me I am _wrong_ . Just _look_ at you. You are a _child_ in a _war_ and you dare lecture _me_ on morals?” This time it was Maul who scoffed, voice dropping below even a whisper, just merely a scratching breath glancing over her montrals. “Face it, my Lady… _we are the same_ ; it is not something you have any bearing to deny.”

“So are you going to kill me?” She breathed back, not even trying to hide her biting, venomous tone that was forced out through clenched teeth and steely eyes. “ _Go on,_ then.” It was a taunt; a childish, _petulant_ , taunt -- and Ahsoka couldn’t have cared less. “ _Prove your point_.” 

“And just _what_ ,” Maul asked, a harsh bitterness dripping from each and every word as his other hand moved to wrap around her other bicep, unyielding pressure making her hiss through her teeth. “would be the point of _that_ , my Lady?”

“To satisfy your sadistic desires.”

“Oh, _yes_ ,” he drawled. “Because _I'm_ the one who lets their _desires_ and _ideals_ get in the way of what is of _true_ cruciality.”

The memory of his offered hand, stretched out and waiting for her to grasp it, but then she had grasped her lightsabers instead.

_Every choice you have made has led you to this moment._

In spite of herself, she bristled -- and then she couldn't quite stand his proximity any longer. Like a volcano teeming to erupt, the air around him was acidic, _scalding_ , and _oh so hard to breathe in_ , and she wanted him _away_.

Her muscles were smarting; a ruthless and relentless sensation of strained limbs. Her bones held a deep-set ache that made her feel hollow. The blaster burn on her shoulder still felt like it was steaming, melting away layers of her skin, Maul acting as a catalyst to speed up the jarringly painful process of smoldering flesh with his bitterly toxic presence. 

Spine pressed uncomfortably up against the durasteel, she could feel the bruising spreading. Left arm bracing her against the panel, bicep in a vice-like grip the strength of durasteel, Ahsoka felt her arm start to tremble under the effort of supporting both herself and Maul’s body weight from slamming her back into the console. Her skin _burned_ at his grip --scalding and unyielding -- and she forced down her bile at being so close to his amaroidal aura. 

And then she felt her wrist _pop_ in his vice-like grasp, and Ahsoka knew she had had _enough_ of being manhandled. 

It wasn’t much of a conscious plan -- more so acting on instincts -- but suddenly her right arm was moving, her forearm a leveraged point between them, and she was roughly forcing him away. He put up no resistance, releasing her as if he had not a care in the world, eyes never leaving hers, boring roughly into her, even as Ahsoka called her blade back to her hand from where it had lain forgotten on the floor, its azure glow illuminating the taut space between them in it’s familiar, yet still foreign glow, once again. 

Even free from his physical hold on her, his eyes still seared into her, and her skin burned where he had touched her, as if the acidic nature of his presence had bled through onto her skin. 

“And, according to your _faultless_ logic, why won’t I kill you?” She narrowed her eyes at him, wrist still aching and smarting, but still like steel.

Maul studied her, hands behind his back as he ignored the blade held to his neck. “And what would that accomplish? We are _alone_ , Lady Tano. There is no one left to tell you what to do; nothing for you to be a _pawn_ of anymore -- no one telling you that you must hate me, and nothing to say for a logical rationale on _why_ you would take my life, unless it would be for you to become a hypocrite of the very thing you so swore to not moments ago: you have _morals_ , do you not? Where is the righteous vengeance of killing an unarmed man?” He was mocking her, but she did not let his words warrant an outward reaction.

But internally, Ahsoka cursed him, for she knew he was correct. But even though Maul might be unarmed, he was still _dangerous_ \-- but she wouldn't be killing him; not now, anyway -- but that wasn't exactly exempt from a change. 

“And so what do you propose, then, if you are so positive that I won’t be gutting you today? You want to be _best friends?_ Denounce all violence and become _pacifists_?” Now she was the one mocking him -- though the only sign of annoyance Maul gave was the flaring of his nostrils. 

“I am _merely_ _suggesting_ that our differences are not so different _anymore_ , Lady Tano, and that you must open your mind to the _possibility_ that you are _not always right_ just because you follow the philosophy of the Jedi. Do not be so _obtuse_ as to suggest that my argument is a delusion, because you and I _both_ know that it is not.” He leered down at her, the blue hues of her blade casting odd shadows over his tattooed face. “Believe me or not, but there is nothing _else_ for you to believe in. Not anymore.”

Ahsoka knew that the undoubtable reason he was attempting to coerce her into a truce was to save his own skin; Ahsoka was really the one with the power, no matter how much bigger, more threatening, more sadistic or more manic Maul was -- Ahsoka held the knowledge of the hyperspace coordinates, she held the chip on her shoulder of successfully besting him in combat -- and most importantly, she was the one with the _lightsabers_. 

  
  


But she also knew that there was unmistakable _truth_ in what he was saying, because that aching, _painful_ hollow in her chest was not abating, and she _couldn't feel Anakin_ anymore, and she felt _so empty_ and _bare_ , because it wasn’t until she had _truly_ _lost_ _everything_ , did she really realize how full she had been of something she didn't even know she had. Until it was too late, and the feeling had only been noticed by the acidic absence it left behind as it tore from her being like the breath from her lungs that she _hadn't quite seemed to catch_.

And then Ahsoka was lowering her saber, turning her back on Maul, and not finding it in herself to properly acknowledge that she was leaving herself vulnerable to be blindsided, for no other reason than the fact that she _couldn't find it in herself to care_ _much anymore._

She slid into the pilots seat, sitting rigidly with her arms crossed, and let the streaks of hyperspace sear into her retinas.

And then Maul silently took the seat to her right, and then they didn't speak again.

**Author's Note:**

> this was my first attempt at writing maul (and posting). i feel like maul is so fun to write because of the way he talks... i hope i got it right, but it was still fun anyway, even though its now 5am and i have an english essay due at 8am because high school sucks and i have no time management skills whatsoever 
> 
> anyway, hope you enjoyed! :)


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